Within a few minutes Matthew was back with his report. “A sinkhole of villainy and vice, but I didn’t see your man Flynch. A drawer I cornered and bribed said he hadn’t been seen all day and he was usually about by this hour.”
“What about William, his accomplice?”
“The same from the drawer. He had been at work since five o’clock, and neither had been in. He knew William well, he said. William Simmons is his full name.”
“What color did you give to your interest in them?” she asked.
“That I was an old friend from the country, wanting to surprise them both. I told him I would be back, told him there were certain other residents of the house I wanted to see for old times’ sake. He laughed.”
Inside, Joan saw that Ned Hodge was doing a good busiess. Hodge was arm-wrestling with a burly sailor, and the contest had so captivated with the attention of those present that it was no difficult matter for Joan and Matthew to slip up the stairs unobserved.
On the landing Mother Franklin materialized out of some obscure alcove, and with a proprietary air asked what they would have. On their way to the Gull, Joan had told Matthew about her confrontation with Alice, assuring him that if anything more dishonest than bawdry was afoot at the Gull, Alice would be up to the neck in it. Accordingly, in response to the hideous old bawd’s query, Matthew asked for Alice, an excellent wench, he had heard, a very good lay, at reasonable rates. He smiled lasciviously, almost enjoying this permissible descent into feigned degeneracy. Mother Franklin acknowledged that Matthew was a stranger, but accounted him honest and no rioter or bully, she said. She kept a clean, honest house, she said. The authorities left her alone. Most of her clients kept coming back, and she hoped Matthew and his female companion would do the same. She gave Joan a curious stare, and for a moment Joan feared the old woman would recognize her from her earlier escapade. But no danger of that. Mother Franklin apparently thought it nothing strange that a man and woman together should want to see one of her girls.
But Alice was sick, she said. Wouldn’t they want another, maybe Beth or Mary or Corinna—all plump, saucy wenches? Clean too, she said, each as hot as red pepper and as pliant as the other.
“It must be Alice,” Matthew said with conviction. He asked how much that would be, a visit with Alice. Mother Franklin stroked her chin and named a sum. Matthew countered with a lower, and a baigain was struck in between that seemed to satisfy the old woman. She pointed down the passage and said, “Third door on your right. Knock with a will, the wench is probably asleep.”
A softer knock than Mistress Franklin recommended brought results. A wan face appeared from the shadowy interior, along with the stench of foul linen and something worse. A dead rat, stale urine, rotting garbage? Joan didn’t know how the girl could stand it, the odor, the sweaty closeness of the little room, the ragged smock, the rat’s-nest hair. Alice was worse than before—skin and bones, sick if not dying. A single nub of candle was her only light, and it illuminated a room bare but for a narrow bed with stained sheets, and coverlet all twisted and tom, and a pile of rags in one comer.
Like her aged supervisor, Alice did not seem amazed that a man and woman should simultaneously require her services. She beckoned them come in, and went and sat down on the bed and coughed deeply.
Matthew shut the door, told Alice he had a few questions. Information was all he wanted, he said, speaking gently, quietly, like a kind father addressing a beloved child.
While her husband talked to Alice, Joan watched the pitiful figure on the bed, not so pitiful or sick, however, not to want something in return. Alice looked upward, her jaw fixed, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. More raucous coughing. Joan waited and watched. Then Matthew showed her the vial, and Joan could tell by the expression she had seen it before, or one like it. Alice began to reach for the vial, a longing in her eyes. “Please,” she said, her voice dry from coughing and desperation.
Matthew pulled the vial away. His tone changed. “You’ve seen this before.” It was an accusation, no question. The truth was self-evident. Joan wanted Matthew to hurry. They weren’t in a private place, despite the door, which had neither lock nor bar. Privacy was an illusion here. At any moment anyone might walk in. Unspeakable acts of licentiousness could be discovered within and cause no suspicion, but information gathering was a dangerous business.
Alice said maybe she had seen it, or one like it. Maybe she hadn’t. It was hard to tell about vials. All looked alike, she said. She really wasn’t sure.
“Think hard,” Matthew said. “It’s important—and worth something to you. ’’
Alice hesitated, considering the implied offer. She looked at Matthew, then at Joan, and then back at Matthew.
Matthew reached into his purse and pulled out a shilling.
He started to hand it to her, hesitated. Alice licked her lips. She said: “What do you want to know?”
“Where you got the vial like this one.”
“The old bawd—Mother Franklin.”
“She gave it to you?” Joan put in.
“Not the vial. A few drops from it. Is that vial empty?”
“Who else did she give it to?” Matthew asked, ignoring her question and the implied suggestion he should give her some of its contents.
Alice said she didn’t know. “I had a cough. It wouldn’t go away. Mother Franklin got the medicine for me. It had a great virtue, she said. After I took it a while I got used to it. It eased my pain. Life here wasn’t so bad as before.”
“She gave it to you at no cost?” Matthew asked, incredulous that the wicked harridan should do anything for free.
“At first,” Alice said. “Then she kept a little from my wage for the elixir, as she called it. Then a moiety. At last all. She said I was greatly in her debt for it and if I wanted more, I should do whatever she bid me and not complain or I would never have any more of it and die.”
“Did she give it to anyone else—drops, I mean?”
Alice shook her head negatively.
“To any of the patrons—the lawyers from the Inns, for example?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about her other customers? The men who come whoring?”
She didn’t know about them either. But she said if she had some of the elixir, she wouldn’t have shared it. If the other girls did, he should ask them.
Joan watched the girl’s face during the questioning. She knew Alice was a practiced liar. But she seemed to be telling the truth now.
Then Alice hid her face in her hands and began to weep piteously and shudder like a frightened animal, and Joan thought what an abject creature the girl was and felt sorry for her. She seemed more sinned against than sinning, and Joan would have gone to comfort her had she not been increasingly eager to be gone from this place.
She said to Matthew: “Come, we’ve heard enough from her—she confirms what Keable said. Monk got the vials from here. If not from this poor girl, then from some other. This place is the center, the womb of corruption and no other. Now we must wait for the officers and Hutton’s warrant.’’
The word officers brought Alice out of her lethargy. She sat up erect and shot a questioning look at Joan, then at Matthew. “What is this about officers?” she asked. “I did nothing wrong. Oh, please.” Alice began to wail and tug at her hair. Joan tried to calm her, regretting the unsettling word she had used, but sickness and fear had combined to produce a growing hysteria in Alice. She whimpered and gulped great gulps of air and would not be pacified by Joan’s or Matthew’s assurances that she would not be arrested if she told the truth.
Joan heard heavy footfalls in the passageway, men’s voices; in the next instant the door burst open and Mother Franklin rushed in, followed by Ned Hodge and Flynch. All looked very angry.
“That’s them,” said Mother Franklin, pointing first at Matthew, then at Joan, with an accusatory finger. ‘‘They said they wanted Alice, but see what fraud is here. They’re all still dressed—even Alice.
Now, there’s proof if proof be wanting. And her, her,” the old bawd went on, singling out Joan, “I recognize from before, when she falsely pretended to be a man and wrought havoc in the house betwixt Alice here and Nan Warren.”
“Easy on,” said Hodge to Mother Franklin. “We know who they be and why they’ve come and have had proper instructions as to what to do with them.” He walked over and wrenched the vial from Matthew’s hand, held it to his nose and, smiling grimly, put it in his pocket.
“He stole it from the doctor,” said Mother Franklin.
“Peace, old woman,” Hodge snarled. “The less said, the better.”
As yet neither Matthew nor Joan had said anything, being too surprised by the sudden invasion of the room to answer, and unsure as to what could be said, under the circumstances. Alice was on her feet now, glaring at Joan. It was obvious that now that Mother Franklin had spoken, Alice remembered too. But the girl seemed more frightened of Hodge and Flynch than hostile toward Matthew or Joan.
Hodge seemed to enjoy his role as bully and captain of Flynch, who stood slightly behind him with his hand on the pommel of his dagger. His eyes were fixed on Joan, and Joan was very much afraid. “We paid our fee to have commerce with this wench and now we’re done and will be on our way,” Matthew said, his voice tense.
Behind Hodge, Flynch laughed. Hodge told him to shut up. The men didn’t move; they blocked the door. Hodge was bigger than Matthew, and Flynch bigger than Hodge. Joan noticed Flynch had a pistol in his belt. Hodge looked down at Alice, who was cringing like a dog expecting to be beaten, and said: “Speak, pasty-face. What’s this man been telling you?”
“Aye,” said Mother Franklin. “What’s she been telling him, that’s what I would fain know.”
“They made me answer questions,” Alice whimpered, drawing back from the innkeeper fearfully.
“What questions?”
“About the vial they had and who gave one to me and for what reason.”
“And I suppose you told all?” Hodge said with contempt.
Mother Franklin asked Hodge what he was going to do with the interlopers, as she called them, but he just told her to mind her business and get out. He would take care of things as he had been instructed, and the less she knew of it, the better.
Mother Franklin glowered at Joan and Matthew and did what she had been told.
‘‘Don’t think you’re going anywhere, ’’ Hodge said to Matthew, who had made a little motion as though to follow Mother Franklin. He turned and signaled to Flynch with a raised eyebrow. Flynch pulled the pistol from his belt, cocked it, and leveled the barrel at Matthew’s chest.
“You can’t keep us here,” Matthew said in a trembling voice unfamiliar to Joan. Her sense of his fear made her sick inside. Gladly would she have the day to begin again to do things differently.
“Think again, Stock,” said Hodge. “You’re trespassing in my house. I have some rights, as any of your lawyer friends will tell you. Flynch and I will just escort you two to the door. And don’t make any sudden moves. Flynch here is a more than tolerable marksman. His pistol’s cocked and upon my command will belch forth a ball that will put a hole in your cockscomb the size of my thumb.”
Flynch accepted the compliment with a nod of his great moon-face, keeping his eyes on Joan, much to her terror. If he had occasion to fire, she had no doubt who would be his first target.
“What will we do with the girl?” Flynch asked, waving the barrel of the pistol at the quaking figure on the bed.
“Bring the tattletale along,” said Hodge with a little laugh. “Her flapping tongue is a mighty inconvenience to our efforts, and in her condition a man would rather go to bed with a skeleton. God, how it reeks in here.”
Hodge went to the door and, opening it, looked out into the passage. “Coast is clear,” he said in a loud whisper. He told Alice to come, and Joan and Matthew too, and they all went out into the passage, but instead of turning toward the stairs, they headed in the other direction, coming after about twenty paces to a door looking very much like the others but, when opened, revealing a narrow descending staircase. Behind them, Flynch asked Hodge if he should fetch a lamp or taper, and Hodge sent him back to Alice’s room for her candle. Then they descended the stairs, Hodge leading the way, Flynch and his pistol bringing up the rear, and Matthew, Joan, and Alice in the middle, and God only knew who was the more fearful of what was to happen next.
The stairs were creaky and steep, and there being no banister but only the walls on each side, Joan descended with her shoulder to the wall and one of her hands on the back of her husband, who was walking in front of her. It was, Joan surmised, a stairway not for normal use, but rather an escape route, constructed years before, by its looks. The impression was strengthened as they continued to descend beneath the main floor of the tavern, a passing she detected by the sound of muffled music and voices coming from the other side of one wall. Then the staircase turned at a sudden angle and came out in a kind of cellar with low ceiling and rough timber walls. With the candle, Hodge set a torch in the wall to burning, and now she could see all there was to see. She looked upon a very spacious room with a dirt floor and a row of wine casks on one side. The cellar appeared to be unused for its original purpose, however, for Joan breathed no winy sweetness but an earthy stench, as in tombs or caves; there was a layer of dirt over the casks and a world of spiderweb-bery in between and a sense of no one having entered the cellar in a long time.
Hodge ordered them to keep moving and led them away from the stairs and deeper into the cellar, and now Joan’s sensitive nose detected something new and fouler still, the distinctive stench of the Thames at low water, when all the muck and rottenness floated up, and she became more apprehensive than ever and clutched to Matthew’s hand as though any moment he would be snatched from her by some unseen presence and vanish into the darkness beyond the torchlight.
They came at last to the end of the cellar, and Hodge stopped before a small door. He fumbled for the keys at his belt and, finding one, inserted it in an old-looking lock. The lock opened; the door creaked on its hinges and opened into a seeming nothingness. Hodge knelt down and took from the outer side of the door a ship’s rope ladder and hung it over into the darkness. Then he ordered them to descend, one by one, threatening them with instant death if they tried any trickery.
During their subterranean journey, Alice had been sobbing and whimpering and occasionally coughing; otherwise there had been a stony silence on all sides. Now Hodge told Alice he was tired of her whimpering and that he would have no more of it or she should die first. While waiting her turn to climb down—Matthew and Hodge were the first to go—Joan went over and put her arm about the girl’s frail shoulders and whispered to her that she should do what she was told since there was no help, and this had the effect of silencing her.
Then Joan climbed down, fearful of the ladder’s rungs and the darkness below, and having come to the bottom of the pit, as she supposed it to be, found herself six or seven feet from the level of the doorway and standing on a rocky shelf only a little distance from black water.
They were in a vault, but of what kind or purpose, she could not discern. On both sides were walls of rough stone, as in a fortress, but at the opposite end was no wall at all but an iron grillwork or portcullis, through which she could see the river. Above them, she supposed, were houses and even streets, all built at the river’s edge while this vault was beneath, a secret, hideous dungeon.
“Don’t even think of escaping by water,” Hodge said, seeming to sense the direction of Joan’s thoughts. “The water yonder is the very vomit of the city. The foulest of sewers. One gulp and you’re a dead man with twenty pestilences in your belly. It’s also deeper than it looks.”
Joan was taking in the measure of this threat when she detected a sudden movement in the comer of her eye. Searching the darkness beyond Hodge’s torch, she saw a rat, as large as a terrier, creeping from the shadows. The creature began to gnaw at so
mething at the water’s edge. He was joined by several other rats, who seemed to have no fear of the human intruders in their domain. Joan uttered a little cry of disgust, and even the terrified Alice screamed, but Hodge and Flynch only laughed and said they should be grateful for the company and not complain. There were worse ways of dying, Hodge said, than this. He enumerated several in grisly detail, but the invidious comparisons did nothing to allay Joan’s fears or her loathing of her captors.
“Shall we leave them light?” asked Flynch, implying by his tone that to do so would waste a good candle, even if it was only a nub.
“Oh, they shall have light,” Hodge said with a mirthless laugh. “And company. Yet both shall be short-lived. This is what comes of snooping in other people’s business. It’s a shame it must be your last lesson.”
‘‘Don’t try calling out either, ” Flynch added, his mocking voice floating down from above them. “For none shall hear but the rats. This cellar is old as Abraham’s uncle and long forgotten. You’re as safe from discovery and rescue here as you would be in Newgate or the Tower itself.”
Hodge used the torch to relight the nub of candle. He handed it to Joan. “When this night is over, you’ll wish my friend Flynch had finished you in the street, Mistress Stock.” Matthew asked Hodge what would happen to them. Were they to die of the cold or starve? And what did he mean about their having company and the night being worse than a dagger in the back? He asked whom Hodge had taken his orders from, and he looked forlornly at Joan and she at him while Hodge laughed and said they should wait upon the event. He doffed his cap, wished them good night, and ascended with a mariner’s practiced footing. He pulled the ladder up after him. Then the door was shut with a thud as final as the striking of the last nail in a coffin’s lid.
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